Hello
I am starting a series of teachings my father had put together. He had such a gift from the Lord and was faithful to the Holy Spirit by listening and delving into the scriptures. He dug into the Greek to find the original meaning of words that are often mistranslated from the Hebrew to the Greek to English, especially in the King James version.
I hope this message clears up any questions you might be struggling with in this area. If this presents any questions I would be glad to help clarify by email.
I have added and taken away from the original message, as it was taped and often the way we talk doesn't always translate well to writing. I hope this message sinks into your understanding by His Spirit and gives you a little more insight on what God did for us through His son Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 4:22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
In the beginning of that paragraph Paul says you should not live any longer as the gentiles or the nations walk. As Christians God expects us to walk in a different way than the world around us.
Because it says, "they live in the futility of their minds."
We have been made new through the work of Jesus Christ in the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. When you believe in Jesus Christ, you are regenerated by the Holy Spirit,
that is different then the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
To be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, is the life of God implanted within us and that life is incorruptible, it has no death in it, it cannot die.
People sometimes have an argument that you can loose your salvation, that is an exposure of our ignorance's on what it's all about.
Because salvation is not something that is given to us, what is given to us in salvation is a new life. It is a union with God Himself, a spiritual union with God Himself where He puts His life within us and that's what it means to be born again. To be born again doesn't mean it's to change your way of living. To be born again means you have received spiritual life. You have been born from above, that is what it really says in John 3... we are born from above more than again. Being born from above is being born again in the spirit--being born spiritually.
And Jesus made it clear it is a spiritual birth He is talking about or a begotten of God in a spiritual way. So if we understand that really, it is foolish to say "that we can loose our salvation".
Salvation is not something dependent on anything that we do!
Salvation is dependent on the work of God, who has unilaterally with Himself and His son (and the son was God manifested in the flesh). So without any help from the world or you or me or anyone, God did on behalf of the human race in Christ all that He requires of the human race. He died for the sins of the human race and He raised the human race with Christ into newness of life...
And then this is the importation of that work that Jesus did in a general way and legally for humanity that comes to individuals, one at a time. And that work is what Jesus referred to as being born from above or being born again. The whole world isn't born again but there are those in the world who Christ died for and redeemed and reconciled to God that received that single touch from God called being born again or born from above. It is the importation of the life of God into you the believer. Just as when you have a child as a human being, it is the life of the father and the mother that is imparted into the life of the child. So when you are born of God it is the same thing. It is the life of God the father that is imparted in the object of His purpose at that particular time, so that not everyone comes into the experience of being begotten except one at a time.
In history we see in the book of Acts at the day of Pentecost three thousand were saved but they weren't all converted and received Christ that day, the next day some more were added. We find eventually in the early chapters of Acts where there were five thousand. It says daily they were added to the church, such as were being saved, that is a present tense.
The first step of being saved is to be born from above, you have to get the life from God before anything can be saved. What does it mean to be saved? It means to be delivered from your sins and from your old self, your old ways, your old ideas and your old habits into the new life in God. And you haven't been saved until that new life of God is manifested into your flesh. So it isn't really accurate to say I was saved in 1966 or whenever, it was started for you then. You were being saved and you are being saved today because you are being renewed by the Holy Spirit as we cooperate with Him in the life that He gave us.
Now the work of God is dependent upon our cooperation in us after He has begotten us. Now you don't do anything to be begotten, anymore than your son or daughter did to get born. It's not the act of the child to bring them into the world, it was the act of the father and mother. You didn't do anything to get born again either. You were begotten not by the will of man, not by the will of the flesh but by the will of God. God alone begot you sovereignly. And if He hadn't done that you would still be in your old self, the old self of Adam and you would not be living in the realm of the Spirit.
That is a gift from God - He does it! It is His work!
Now after He puts His life into you, then He starts child training you and now you start having a responsibility for Him and the first responsibility is one of faith... Where you begin to believe what He says and what His way is and what is best for you. Not what you think but what He thinks.
That is faith.
Faith is your way of thinking, faith is your attitude, faith is your openness to God. That is all a part of faith, it is not just a simple believing, a mental acceptance of what God said.
It is the recognition that what He has for you is better than
anything you have for yourself. That His will is best for you, better than your own ideas of what is good. It is all apart of this concept called faith. And this occurs in the realm of the Spirit, in the realm of mind.
Now until you have been born of God your mind is set into the ways of the world, you have a mindset or attitude concerning the things of the flesh. When you are born again from God there is a change in your mindedness. There is a change in your mind.
Now the mind is a part of spirit.
Your mind and memory is perfect. We often say, oh I have a bad memory. No you don't. There is nothing in your life that isn't in your memory but it is another matter to recall it to consciousness. In the realm of your spirit and your mind you haven't forgotten anything but the brain is an instrument of recollection of what happens of your spirit into your consciousness. Your brain is involved in bringing things in your spirit into conscious existence in you.
That is, the brain is the intermediatory between the flesh and the spirit in you. It is the mechanism that is utilized in the creation of the human being to bring what is in the spirit into your conscious realm. Your daily life, your flesh. Now that is the reason some of us Christians continue to walk in the flesh instead of the spirit even though we are made new. We haven't quite got the grasp to be spiritually minded.
To be spiritually minded means that I walk after the Spirit.
How do you walk in the Spirit?
The superficial answer is when you walk in the Spirit you are not sinning and living under the appetites of the lower nature. That is not really what it is talking about when it says to walk in the spirit and not in the flesh. When
you are walking in the flesh it basically means you are walking in the energy of your ability as a human being. Do you see the difference?
When you're walking in the Spirit you are not walking in your ability but walking in who you are in the Spirit and that is Christ in you the hope of glory. You are a new creation by the work of God and to walk in that means you have to be spiritually minded. Your mind has to be centered on that which is true of you in spirit and that is as I said, mind is a part of spirit, it is not total spirit but is a part of that which is spirit.
I am not talking about the brain when I say mind. We tend to think of the brain when we say mind but that is not your real mind. Your brain is the mechanical instrument of recollection of what is in your spirit/mind.
Your mind is a wonderful thing, it is complete in everybody. But in this world where there is sickness and imperfection many times the mind is affected in a physical way, so that what is in the spirit of that person cannot be expressed in the flesh. So therefore we cannot walk after the mindedness of the Spirit. We are a complex creation but we are not only spirit right now, we are also flesh.
The soul is the combination of the two.
The soul is the combination of flesh and spirit. The soul is the expression of the spirit in your flesh. It is what makes your flesh move and act and live. And what God is after in this day and this short time we are here is the renewing of our soul or the restoration of our soul into that kind of a life that God wants us to live in the flesh which comes from the spirit. So that if you are walking after the spirit you are minding the things of the spirit and you are trying to believe and accept and recognize and reckon upon that which you are spiritually, not the energy of yourself and the flesh and the ability as a human.
Human beings have wonderful abilities, some people are almost supernatural in what they can do. But it is a problem when you are so capable and talented in your own because you don't need God. The whole philosophy of this present day is that we can do anything we want to if we set our mind to it. There is some truth in that but there are things you cannot do as far as God is concerned. There is that self deception that I can do anything on my own.
We are a God unto ourselves. Our righteousness is as filthy rags before God. To walk after the flesh or our own ability does not lead to a better life, temporarily maybe for some but not as far as humanity is concerned.
If we walk in our own energy the consequence to that is sin. As far as God is concerned you cannot please him in the flesh, no matter how righteous or capable you are.
He wants to develop this life that He has put within us, so that it expresses itself in the flesh.
So our problem is our mind. Our mind is a facility of spirit.
So you must be open to the things of the spirit with your mind. You have to be minded--there are several words in the Greek that are used for this thing mind. They are translated in the King James as mind but they have nothing to do with the mind. They are so translated in the King James version such as,
set your affections on things above,
the word there is not affections at all... it is to be minded or to have an attitude, to have a choice. Affections to us is feelings but the word is actually soul,
set your soul on things above, not on things of the earth.
The word that is more often and more corporately used is voo's in the Greek. Voo's is the intellect, the mind -- it is the word that is used in Eph. 4. We are to be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Notice the expression not mind but spirit of our mind.
The mind is the faculty of the spirit.
It is that which extends from our spirit into our consciousness and to be renewed in the spirit of the mind. This means I am to be renewed, that my mind is to be spiritually centered in what the spirit is.
Now, I don't know what the spirit is... you can't feel it.
You don't feel it in the spirit, if you feel it then it has gotten into the soul or your consciousness.
Your soul is your feelings, it is the seat of your affections.
The spirit is our unconscious - if you are unconscious you cannot feel anything, so your soul is your feelings. If you feel it, it no longer is spiritual and has come into the realm of consciousness.
What we are in spirit is what God says is our reality.
The spirit is another word for reality, the reality of things or the truth of things.
Truth and reality are synonymous terms in the scriptures.
Truth and reality as far as you are concerned is that which you are in the unconscious realm and that unconscious realm is another word for spirit. It is interesting that modern psychology have been able to detect that there is more to us that is unconscious than conscious. In fact they estimate only 10% of our abilities. That isn't much, just imagine what a human could do if you could tap into more than ten percent of who and what you are in your unconscious state.
At one time man had almost 100% of who and what he was. There was a curtain drawn across that when man sinned.
That curtain is called the flesh. The flesh is a curtain that keeps us from seeing into the Holy of Holy's. In Israel the tabernacle had a curtain separating the Holy of Holy's, so that you could not see into it or go there. It was in the Holy of Holy's that God dwelt. Only once a year the high priest could go in and he had to be sprinkled with the blood before he went in. Even then they weren't sure about him because if he wasn't right before God he could die so they tied a rope around his ankle in case they had to get him out. So the Holiest place is where God dwells and you weren't allowed in there. Now in the New Testament we are told we can come boldly to the Holiest of all, not by the blood of bulls and goats but by the blood of Jesus Christ and only through Him. So through the blood of Jesus Christ you can come boldly into the living presence of God without being afraid. That is the gift of God that comes to us through the work of Jesus Christ on behalf of the human race.
Anyone can come into the presence of God but only through the faith in the blood of Jesus Christ. God wants us to live in his presence, so He is at work making us spiritual beings by implanting
the life of God in us. Now the life of God within can stand the life of God in His presence. When you come into the presence of God through the blood of Jesus and the life of God within, you will never be rejected. And that is what God wants us to understand and to reckon upon and to walk after. That is what it is partially to be spiritually minded. That is what it means to accept the reality of what we are in spirit and to develop an attitude.
In the Greek that is translated as mind or minded, that is really more attitude than an activity of the mind.
What is attitude? To have an attitude means I have a bias of mindedness.
Such as in computers, they have a default setting and if you get lost in a program you can click into the default and it will take you back to the original settings. The original attitude the computer was set to. And so in humanity it has this same thing.
We train our mindedness along certain paths and avenues and develop certain attitudes. We are to have an attitude towards spiritual mindedness. To be spiritual minded is to have a spiritual attitude. To think of everything in terms of reality and reality is what God says it is.
But I can't feel it. That is the problem we have, if we could just feel it we could believe it. But we are not yet freed from the flesh, the veil is still there and we are not able to look into our own hearts and spirit. We are not able to see the reality of our existence.
But John says that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. For we will see Him as He is.
Because we see Him as He is, we see Him as He is in us. So when He appears we will be like Him it says. We will be absolutely for the first time the reality of who and what we are. So today we have to accept the reality of what God has declared to us and it all begins after God puts His life within us... the ability to think spiritually is given to us then. Now until we have received the life of God in us we are not able to think spiritually. The natural man the scriptures say, does not receive or understand or grasp the things of the spirit of God. But God has put His Spirit within us so that what is in His heart might be in our heart as well.
So this is the warfare we are walking in, to receive the reality of who we are and the mind has to be in control. You have to be minded after the Spirit.
So such is our struggle between what God says and what we see or what our true reality is. It takes practice and knowing the word. I urge you to read who you are in Christ, so that when past "tapes" play in your brain of what you've been told that is contrary and you accepted that as truth, you can arm yourself with the truth, the reality of what God says.
I know this post is long and maybe somewhat confusing to some. But I urge you to seek God for His wisdom and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal understanding in areas of your life you need spiritual growth.
Blessings
Rebecca
